What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The goal of the technique is to reduce the impact of internal and external interruptions on focus and flow. A pomodoro is indivisible. When interrupted during a pomodoro, either the other activity must be recorded and postponed (inform – negotiate – schedule – call back) or the pomodoro must be abandoned. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are named pomodoros. Read more about the Pomodoro Technique here

Why the Pomodoro Technique?

If I can get one Pomodoro done in between meetings, workshops and calls, then I am happy. That Pomodoro is priceless and it helps me answer that long email, get started on that document or wrap my head around a problem. 25 minutes is long enough so that I can reach my flow state and short enough that I feel that I actually can do it. It may take between 5-10 minutes to reach the flow state. If I manage to interrupt myself with social media, coffee break or decide to do something else, then I may spend longer time in total on that email instead of just get it done during a Pomodoro. If you want to succeed with Pomodoro, you need to make yourself unavailable, but equally important, you need to make yourself available again when those 25 minutes have passed. That is why we created the Pomodoro PowerShell tool

What is flow?

Flow is the peak performance state where you feel your best and you perform your best. The good news is, it’s hackable. One of the hacks is inducing flow using the Pomodoro Technique. Read more about flow over at the Flow Genome Project

An important part of succeeding with the Pomodoro Technique is lists with your most important tasks that you can prioritize. I use OneNote for that. Check out how I do it in my OneNote LifeHacks YouTube series

3 thoughts on “Set yourself unavailable with this open source PowerShell based Pomodoro timer”

I love the PSscript, makes it easy to start the process of getting into the flow state.
I found that creating a dedicated button on the taskbar, makes it even easier. It’s just a very simple psscript and a shortcut that’s needed. I even start my favorite Flow state spotify playlist with the same button..

Create a .ps1 file and place it wherever you want, Mydocuments etc. In the ps1 file paste these two lines, you could of course change the spotify URI to some other playlist and add some other argument to start-pomodoro. Save the file as: start-pomodoro.ps1

Next, pin powershell.exe to the taskbar. Or create a new shortcut. Edit properties on the shortcut, and paste this in the target field: or just paste -file Start-Pomodoro.ps1
after powershell.exe:
%SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file Start-Pomodoro.ps1

Paste the filepath to the start-pomodoro.ps1 i the Start in field: C:\Users\username\OneDrive\Documents

Hi Stale, this is super interesting. Would be interested to know if I would be able to include this as a a feature in my mobile app. Basically users would connect my app to their Skype for Business account and be able to automatically update their status with a push of the button from our app (or even in the background if possible).